The Sea Calls

Beaches are special places.

They are places where the deepest and most silent parts of the ocean touch the sun-baked land; where the cold ocean crashes against the land, and where the land, day by day, erodes.

Standing on the shore of Pearl Beach, staring at the waves that crash onto golden sand, Ed is struck with a strange feeling. This is a feeling every lucid dreamer is familiar with; the sudden pressing weight of the space between waking and sleeping, where the world swirls in front of the dreamer’s eyes. This is when the dreamer realises that they are dreaming, and like an unwinding string, they become aware that in this dreamland, there are no consequences, and no danger. Like the compelling urge to destruct- to touch a flame, jump from tall building, Ed is called to the sea, as if he existed in this dream realm; no danger, no consequence.

He stares at the waves, mesmerised as they are silently sucked back into the ocean.

His family, gasping excitedly at the beauty of the golden sand and the brilliant blue ocean, raced forward onto the beach. Ed paused, the sun’s white hot light momentarily blinding him.

“Big seas coming.”

Rubbing his eyes, Ed turned to where the voice had sounded from. A smallish woman who looked to be in her late sixties stood to the side of the path, obscured slightly by the brush of the beach foliage.

She shook her head, the grey silver flecks in her hair catching in the sun.

“Big seas”, she said again, looking past Ed to the horizon.

He blinked with confusion.

“I thought it was supposed to be clear this week?” he said, his voice sharp with annoyance.

The woman’s gaze fell onto him.

“Big seas coming. Be careful.”

Ed scoffed, and made his way onto the hot sand; this was a holiday, and he wasn’t going to let this strange woman put him off enjoying himself.

But the strange woman’s words echoed through his head for the rest of the day, and that night Ed didn’t sleep well. The unbelievably loud sound of the waves crashing and the hissing of sea spray filled the emptiness of the night. Every time Ed shut his eyes, all he could see was the beach; the water highlighted by the silver moon, its surface shimmering, the dark blues and greens of water looking like black ink in the darkness. The ocean roared in his ears as he slept uneasily, and grew so loud and tumultuous, that he shot awake several times, nearly expecting to be surrounded by that cold, inky ocean.

Ed didn’t wake up the next morning so much as he realised that he was already awake, staring at the ceiling.

He stumbled down the hallway rubbing his stinging eyes, feeling his brain protest to the sounds of talking emanating from the kitchen.

Entering the lino and painted white timber lined kitchen, Ed felt the stinging in his eyes intensifying, to where stumbled to a stop and squished his eyes together, feeling them water profusely.

“What’s wrong?” his mother Andrea, chimed, suddenly behind him, placing a hand on his shoulder. He startled, and then groaned, pressing his palms tightly onto his eyes, feeling his hot tears leak onto his hands.

“What have you done?” Andrea sighed, prying his hands from his eyes.

His eyes immediately stopped stinging, and Ed stared down at his hands, his wrists still bracketed by his mother’s, to see that there was a small mound of sand lying on his palms.

“That’s strange” Andrea said, “Maybe you got sand in your hair yesterday on the beach?”

Ed jolted his hands away from his mother, moving to tip the sand into the kitchen sink.

Big seas. Be careful.

“Yeah, that’s probably it”, Ed murmured, not believing himself.

“I’m gonna go shower then. Get the rest of …. the sand off”

Andrea shrugged, already turning away, concerned with something else.

“Don’t be too long, we’re heading to the beach soon.”

In the bathroom, Ed immediately locked the door and rushed to the scratched mirror, mounted on the pale mint plaster wall. His eyes looked bloodshot, but nothing more- there was no sand to be seen. He breathed out the fear that had flooded into his body in one relived breath, and slumped against the frosted glass doors of the shower.

Caught up in revelling in his relief, what Ed didn’t notice, was the mounting pressure in his left ear. He failed to notice it until the pressure burst, and a small torrent of icy cold water trickled out of his ear and streamed down the lines of his jaw and neck.

Ed’s heart jumped to his throat, and his eyes widened.

He lifted a shaking hand to the water, coating his fingers in the wet trail it had made on his skin. Feeling the chill that emanated from the frozen cold of the water giving him goose bumps, he inspected the water on his fingers.

It had no discernible colour, but there was a slight scent that he was unable to put his finger on. Ed brought his shaking fingers to his mouth, lightly touching his finger to his tongue. He recoiled when the briny taste of salt water flooded his mouth, making him shudder violently with disgust. What had streamed out of his head, frozen cold, with no warning, was sea water.

Ed blinked, and there he was again, staring out to the horizon. The shimmering deep blue of the water and the blinding blue of the sky becoming inseparable the longer he stared. He made his way, once more, onto the sand. His heart was beating strangely in his chest, and he was trying to convince himself that it didn’t mean anything.

This is my first holiday for years, he told himself. And I’ve been working for such a long time. He realised suddenly, that stress was probably the reason for all the strangeness; he was seeing patterns where there were none, getting spooked for what were just odd coincidences.

He nodded to himself assuredly, earning a strange look from his mother.

It was only stress.

With this conclusion, Ed was able to enjoy the beach. He relaxed on the sand, dipped his toes in the water. Something in him stopped him from swimming though. The water was blue and sparkling, and yet the idea of wading into that briny salt water made him feel sick to his stomach. His two brothers Tom and Josh mocked him mercilessly for not wanting to swim, confused and almost offended by Ed’s reluctance.

“Oh leave him alone”, said Andrea lazily from behind a magazine, and the two young men scoffed and ran off towards the ocean.

Ed watched them go, their image shimmering in the heat of the day. Before his eyes, they leapt into the surf, yelling and grinning. Their playful jumping and splashing was mesmerising in the heat haze, and Ed felt almost hypnotised by their movements and the droplets of sparkling water that they splashed at each other.

But then everything went all wrong. Tom’s lively grin was suddenly glinting with a sort of turpitude that made Ed feel cold to the bone. His teeth were like sharks’ teeth, pointed and razor sharp, and in his hand, there was a knife, glinting and dangerous.

Tom lunged at Josh, grinning that horrible shark grin. His knife caught Josh across the arm first, and blood spurted out of the wound, mixing with the glittering sea spray.

Josh’s face contorted with fear and pain, and he screamed, but no sound came out.

That awful grin on Tom’s face only grew wider and obscener, relishing in the blood that splashed onto his face as he plunged the knife deeply into Josh’s stomach.

Ed gave a great gasp, as if he had been holding his breath the whole time, and Andrea looked over at him with concern.

He watched as Tom drove the knife into Josh’s body over and over, blood spraying onto his face and body. Josh was limp now, laying in the shallow water, the tides threatening to carry him away. But Tom kept a firm grip on him.

It was unfolding before him like a nightmare, and Ed let out a blood curdling scream when Tom crouched over Josh’s body like a demon, and began tearing off chunks of skin and viscera from Josh’s torso. He ripped them to pieces with his sharp shark teeth, swallowing crudely, that terrible smile still plastered across his face.

Tom looked up from Josh’s body, staring Ed down with deadly black blue eyes, swirling like a deep and terrible vortex.

Ed was screaming in sheer terror, and Andrea was next to him shaking his body in panic, yelling at him to calm down.

Tom abandoned Josh’s body to the surf, and began running at an unrelenting speed back up onto the sand, towards Ed and Andrea.

Ed was inconsolable as the beast drew closer, the knife still glinting in his hand, his eyes deep and black.

But when Tom reached them, he wasn’t a beast. He looked down at Ed with undisguised shock and concern.

“What the hell is wrong with him?” said Josh, who was standing next to Tom, puffing and out of breath, and not drowning in blood and briny salt water.

Ed stopped screaming, and looked between Tom and Josh with confusion.

“I must have dozed off or something” he said at last, his voice horse and shaking.

Andrea sat back and rolled her eyes, and his two brothers shook their heads in disbelief.

“Well, whatever”, Tom said with a wave of his hand. “Reckon it's lunch time anyway”.

Ed’s hands shook while they packed up, and even though he was embarrassed for causing such a scene, he couldn’t shake the memory of those sharp teeth and Josh’s lifeless body floating away on the tide.

His family walked ahead of him off the beach, Ed straying behind, now more paranoid and stressed than he had been earlier in the day.

“Oh mum,” said Josh suddenly, “check this out, there was like a sharp rock or something out there.” He brandished his arm at his mother, showing off an impressive and deep cut right across his bicep.

Andrea gagged and flapped her hands in disgust, looking away from the jagged cut with a scrunched-up face.

“Gross!” she squealed, and the two young men burst into laughter, amused by their mother’s squeamishness.

Ed stopped dead in his tracks, watching his family walk off, eyeing the cut on Josh’s arm with cold dread.

That cut…It was exactly where Tom had sliced him with the knife

Menacing laughter bounced around Ed’s head, and the waves crashed heavily on the shore behind him. He closed his eyes, wishing to believe that it really was just a rock that had cut Josh, but knowing with a terrible certainty that it was not.

For the rest of the day, that awful shark grin was burned on the inside of his eyelids.

That night Ed slept restlessly again.

All throughout the evening, he had a terrible feeling of detachment from his family. His brothers and mother looked at him like he had an extra head, and he knew that if he mentioned what had happened in his daydream, they would think he was insane.

He wallowed in his loneliness, wishing that his family wasn’t acting so normal; wishing that they were suffering as much as he was.

I’ll leave tomorrow then, he decided. I’ll go back home and never see the ocean again.

The decision to leave the holiday early gave him only a little comfort as he lay in bed, writhing with the sound of the crashing waves pressing down on him. He fell asleep suddenly, and as he slept, water seeped into his bedroom, deathly quiet and deathly cold. As the salt water pooled on the floor, Ed dreamed of the ocean again- of the big tumultuous sea, churning with the strong tides, and of the horrors contained within it. He choked on the sharp salt water, and his muscles ached from the frigid cold.

Ed startled awake, crying out in fear, gasping air back into his lunges.

He swung his feet onto the floor, and jumped when he was met with icy water up to his shins.

A cold dread settled in the pit of his stomach, and he stood in the freezing water with a terrible feeling of resignation.

It was the ocean; it had come for him.

The door suddenly gave a deep groan as if it was holding back the weight of the entire ocean, and the slow seeping water suddenly became rushing and fast, streaming through the seams of the door with urgency.

Tears streamed down Ed’s face as waded through the water, now at chest height.

The briny water was impossibly dark and blue for being quite shallow, and looking into the churning surface of the water he could see his fate laid out before him. All of a sudden, the floor dropped out from under Ed’s feet, and his head was pulled under the swell. The water churned and hissed, preparing to drown him in its deceptive depths, but before it could, Ed awoke once more, his arm rigidly pointing out in front of him. He was on the beach. His feet were buried in the sand, and at the end of his arm, pointing with terrible certainty, was the stormy ocean. The waves crept forward as he stood there confused and terrified, the icy cold water lapping at his feet. He had, in his sleep, wandered all the way down onto the beach, and was now faced with the inky tumultuous water that haunted him.

The waves roared with the storm, the white froth visible even in the darkness; and it was so very dark. The ocean was hunting him. It wanted to possess him entirely until he forgot the dangers of its deep black waters.

But how could he forget when the tides pulled at him relentlessly in his sleep, and the waves crashed mercilessly down on him, as heavy as concrete.

The ocean’s danger could not be disguised; nor could it be forgotten.

But the ocean would make Ed come to it regardless. Make him kneel at its feet, and submit his body to the crushing swell. And kneel he would.

Ed walked towards the churning dark waves with a bravery he had never felt before in his life. The ocean grinned at him with those pointed deadly teeth, and Ed grinned back, no longer scared. He wasn’t scared, because just as the waves will continue to wash away footprints from the sand, the descent into nothingness is inevitable. Ed had, for his whole life, been swimming with the tides that pulled him through life. Now, wading into the briny cold water, he felt for the first time, a separation from this pull; a freedom from the inevitability of the abyss would await him at the end of the tide. The salty water lapped at his chin, and the white caps in the distance swam in front of his eyes. There was no time to panic, and no time to turn back to shore. There was no danger, no consequence, and his head was pulled soundlessly beneath the rippling water’s surface.

The waves rushed above his head, and the currents threw his body relentlessly, as if he were a doll. The sweet feeling of euphoric freedom washed over him, and he submitted to the tides, letting the ocean drag him away from shore.

He didn’t have to go home, he didn’t have to escape; he was already free, and the tides washed his body away, dragging him down into the blue-black abyss.